Monday, 12 January 2015

1. Golf Cart Fail

This runaway vehicle wreaked minor on-field havoc following a high school football championship in Texas last December. But a heroic bystander hopped aboard and put on the brakes.

No casualties occurred, and the clip immediately became Internet legend.

2. Penalty Kick Fail

Watch out for the ricochet, goalie! This kid gets it in the right in the chops.

3. Mascot on Rollerblades Fail

What happens when you put an inflatable dinosaur on rollerblades and ask it to skate down a flight of stairs? Amazingness, that's what.

4. Flopping Fail

In sports, to "flop" is to exaggerate the force of contact in hopes of drawing a favorable call from officials. But you've got to time it much, much better than this guy does.

5. Hockey Celebration Fail

Apparently, if you hug a member of the opposite team after scoring a goal in hockey, you will get punched in the face.

6. Innocent Bystander Fail

This kid is just in the wrong place at the wrong time...to the benefit of the rest of us.

7. Representing Your School Fail

College football mascots are supposed to represent their schools in a fun, positive light — which doesn't typically include picking fights. Here, the University of Oregon's duck slams the University of Houston's cougar.

Bonus points for the sick elbow drop, though.

8. Weightlifting Fail

Not saying we could successfully lift 432 pounds above our heads, but dang, that looks painful.

German weightlifter Matthias Steiner dropped this massive barbell on his neck during the London Olympics this summer, but escaped serious injury.

9. Trampoline Dunk Fail

Sometimes, when you fail, you actually win.

10. Hurdling Fail

Why jump over hurdles when you could just RUN STRAIGHT THROUGH THEM?

File under: Never, Ever Gets Old.

11. Paying Attention Fail

After what could best be described as an "optimistic" shot attempt in a game last season, NBA center JaVale McGee showed some nice hustle getting back on defense. Only problem? His team still had the ball.

12. Judgment Fail

But that wasn't McGee's only legendary moment. Here, he shows why it's not a good idea to try dunking from the free throw line mid-game.

13. Olympic Promo Fail

For some reason, London's Olympic promotions this summer involved hanging Mayor Boris Johnson on a zipline while waving a pair of tiny flags.

Then he got stuck halfway through and it was pretty much the best, funniest, awkwardest thing that could have happened.

14. Grand Slam Celebration Fail

Major Leaguer Kendry Morales broke his lower left leg while celebrating a game-winning grand slam in 2010. This edited video provides the before, during and after rundown.

15. Slam Dunk Fail

See? White guys can jump? It's just the landing that's the hard part.

16. High Dive Fail

The announcer here sums it up perfectly. She calls this attempt from the 1992 Olympics "an absolute failed dive."

17. Piggyback Ride Fail

What begins as an innocent enough piggyback ride atop a fuzzy mascot turns into a pretty epic collision — and YouTube gold.

18. Long Jump Fail

Dude! If you're gonna pump up the crowd like that, you can't just faceplant into the sand.

19. Touchdown Celebration Fail

When you think about it, is there any better way to celebrate a touchdown than by pegging an unsuspecting spectator in the face? Bonus points for originality, at least.

20. Pro Golfer Fail

You'd think a professional golfer could put the ball in the hole with less than 16 strokes. Kevin Na — and the rest of the world — found out otherwise on this par-four hole at the 2011 Valero Texas Open.

21. Head-First Slide Fail

Well, that's one way of doing it...right?

22. Time Management Fail

Tie game, clock winding down — it's always better to get one last attempt up than just let the game go into overtime. A full court desperation heave with a 11 seconds to go is never the way to do it, however.

This classic gaffe by the University of Connecticut's Roscoe Smith came during a matchup of top teams in 2011.

23. Boogie Boarding Fail

Its veracity may be suspect, but this 2008 YouTube classic has more than 12.7 million views, despite a mind-numbing soundtrack.

24. Sportsmanship Fail

The summer of 2011 was a tough time for NBA star LeBron James. It was full of lingering ill-will for his decision to the leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and snarky schadenfreude over his initial failure to win a championship with the Miami Heat.

So it makes perfect sense that he'd let off some steam by viciously dunking on a tiny kid at summer camp, right? That's what happens at the 0:43 mark of this video.

25. Standing on a Basketball Hoop Fail

We're not quite sure why this mascot thought standing on top of a basketball rim was a good idea

But once you've had some time to process your bad luck, you often realize that things aren't as bad as they seem. Take the USMNT, for example — that "heartbreaking" draw still leaves the team with a 76% chance to advance past the group stage.

We assembled this week's Music Monday playlist for occasions just like these. So if you've had a recent string of bad luck, throw on our playlist, and let these laid-back tunes remind you to "Take It Easy."

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Oh my god, Karen, you can't just ask people what they're watching on Netflix.

But if Karen, the ditzy Mean Girls character, did ask Netflix users about their viewing preferences in April, they might answer with one of the many films and TV shows available to stream this month — Mean Girls included. It's not even Oct. 3. So fetch, right?

The new additions come after Netflix's massive purge on Jan. 1. Below, you'll find nearly 40 of the titles that have already arrived or will come to Netflix in April.

Monday, 31 March 2014

For nine years, lovable goofball Ted Mosby has searched far and wide for his soulmate. Along the way, he's had his heart broken (thanks, Stella), made mistakes in the shape of butterfly tattoos and had curious incidents with pineapples.

But at least he's gotten some good stories (and life lessons) out of it all.

How I Met Your Mother ends its television run Monday night, which means it's finally time to see how Mosby landed the girl of his dreams.

But before you say goodbye to the gang and MacLaren's Pub, suit up and see how Ted's love life can help you land your own mother — you know what we mean.

The Pink Panther has been rebooted more times than your aunt’s 1998 iMac — and yet, he returns again.

Franchise owner MGM is putting a modern, live-action/CGI-hybrid twist on The Pink Panther, making it into a family film that centers on the big pink cat, the studio announced Monday. To ensure a modern comic sensibility, they’ve enlisted The Simpsons Movie and Monsters, Inc. director David Silverman to take the helm.

Walter Mirisch — the now 92-year-old executive producer of the original 1963 live-action series starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau — is back on board after taking a break from the Steve Martin reboot that spawned The Pink Panther's 2006 and 2009 versions. Instead of Clouseau, however, this version will reportedly center on the cartoon feline.

“For the first time, the live-action franchise will be united with the world-famous cartoon character in a new hybrid feature film,” Mirisch said in a written statement. “I am excited by our concept, and I look forward to an outstanding movie entertainment.”

It was Clouseau’s bumblings that gave rise to The Pink Panther — not the other way around. Sellers’ turn as the clueless detective never featured the cat; rather, the 1963 original’s title referenced a jewel that everyone is after. But the cartoon panther did appear in the opening credits, and his popularity gave way to the cartoon shorts.

MGM also attempted a reboot in 1993 with Roberto Benigni as Clouseau’s illegitimate son in Son of the Pink Panther. The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news of the project Monday, reported that while Clouseau may be referenced in the new film, he won't be a character.

The mobile app phenomenon that ended abruptly in February has returned — but this time, in the form of a physical, do-it-yourself game kit.

Make Flappy Box is based on a prototype made by Arduino, an open-source, physical computing platform that aims to be affordable and accessible for anyone, regardless of their technical background. Other similar projects include a cardboard-box version of Super Mario Bros.

"Technology has somehow trained us to take things as is, instead of asking the hows and whys," Fawn Qiu, who spearheaded the project, told Mashable. "I'm hoping to make technology more accessible through introducing electronics in a creative and fun way."

Users press one button to start the game and another button to control a character, as a continuously rolling background moves behind it. When the character hits an obstacle, the lid of the box closes and the game is over. As a default, the kit is stocked with a Flappy Birdbackground, but additional templates, such as a race car version, will be available on the Make Flappy Box website.

Qiu made the prototype right after Flappy Bird was removed from Apple's App Store, with the intention to empower people to create their own version of the game, and also so she could keep playing herself. Qiu drew inspiration from 1980s video games such as Frogger.

"The physical game is more intuitive and social. It makes the playing experience more approachable," she said. "It's no longer just one player and the phone, but people around you are also aware of the game which invites collaboration and curiosity."

The kit comes with a guide book, circuit board, and electronics pack that includes motors, a speaker and buttons to control the bird. It also comes with a construction pack, which includes items such as the background template and the box. Players can use the materials to make their own original creations if they get tired of the game. The open-source circuit-board design will be posted on code-sharing site GitHub.

Make Flappy Box's Kickstarter campaign has raised more than $5,000 of its $6,000 goal with four days to go as of press time. The game currently only exists as a prototype, but a final product will be made after the campaign ends. Qiu said a portion of the profits made from Make Flappy Box sales will go toward free engineering workshops for disadvantaged female high-school students in New York City.

Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Sony is jumping into the virtual-reality field, bringing its own system called "Project Morpheus" to the PlayStation 4.

Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida announced Project Morpheus at a Tuesday evening session at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

"The game industry has grown by leverage experiences that people didn’t know they were expecting or think were possible. We push the boundaries of play," Yoshida said. "Nothing elevates the level of immersion better than VR. It delivers a sense of presence."

He added that Sony had been exploring virtual reality since 2010 at its research and development unit. Yoshida showed off pictures of prototypes from Sony Computer Entertainment America's Santa Monica Studios, which used a PlayStation Move controller strapped to the head for motion tracking.

Sony said it is already working with the following companies on virtual reality: Crytek, Epic Games, Autodesk, Havok, Criware, Unity and Wwise.

The company's current developer kit has 1080p display and a 90-degree field of view, according to Anton Mikhailov, a software engineer with Sony Computer Entertainment's research and development team. "It's not a final thing, but a good sweet spot for developers right now."

Mikhailov said the headset will work with the PlayStation Move controllers, the DualShock 4 and the PlayStation Move camera.

In the past year, virtual reality has become a crowded field for gaming, but no products are available yet for consumers. The Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset has been in developers’ hands for about a year. Yoshida said on Tuesday night that he had an “enormous amount of respect” for Oculus VR. The company declined to comment on Sony’s announcement.

Sony did not announce a price or timeline for consumer availability for Project Morpheus. Game developers will be able to view the headset starting Wednesday on the GDC show floor.